The beautiful, pensive writing would be reason enough to read The Dream Thieves, sequel to The Raven Boys, but the suspenseful, character-driven plot adds even more to the bewitching power of this book. While The Raven Boys opens with the very appealing character of Blue, a responsible but free thinking teenager and the only non-psychic in her close knit, eccentric, all-female family, The Dream Thieves spends more time with quick tempered, tortured, sporadically violent Ronan Lynch, who would be harder to appreciate in the story of a less talented author. In Maggie Stiefvater’s hands even Mr. Gray, a suitably chilling hit-man, and Kavinsky, a nihilistic drag-racing thrill-seeker, became people I found myself worrying about.

Ronan can pull things out of his dreams and into the real world, but since it’s a skill he can’t control and his dreams are often vivid nightmares this creates some terrifying problems. It’s the summer after The Raven Boys ended and the mission to find and awaken the ancient Welsh Raven King has gotten more complicated. Though Ronan plays a major role, all the wonderful, intriguing characters from The Raven Boys are involved and the story is told from multiple points of view. Besides Blue, her family, and Ronan there’s Gansey, the private school golden boy who initiated their quest, Noah, a smudgy ghost who fades in and out of existence, and Adam, an intense local boy who grew up in a trailer with an abusive father and has to work multiple jobs to pay his own way through the private school the boys all attend.

Though it’s set in the present day, not the era of the Napoleonic Wars, in tone and in the way this series wraps me in its world it reminds me of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, one of my all time favorite novels. Looking forward to the third Raven Cycle book.